So our children are all grown up and have had or are on their own holidays – without us now. I don’t know whether to be happy or sad! However it has meant that after 23 years Steven and I can go away as a couple again for more than just a few days, for a proper holiday! Online check-in has opened and we are off to California for just under 3 weeks. I’m doing the same as last year – although there will be less photos and probably less frequent updates. After 23 years I guess Steven deserves my undivided attention!

What can I say – We fly on this year’s holiday in 3 weeks so I thought it was about time I finished the photo book from last year. The tortoise has crossed the line and awaits her trophy in the post! In the meantime you can see the book below. To see what we got up to at the time – read the blog that was done at the time by visiting this page – Holiday 2011. It describes all the gory details!

Click on the “view fullscreen square” next to the Blurb icon on the bottom right

It’s great playing games with friends, but we wanted to do something really different this New Year’s Eve – total humiliation for all of us! We decided to do a murder mystery evening. I have to say it was hard work preparing for it, but I think it went really well. Really easy to do, courtesy of mymysteryparty.com. All the kids, including the big ones, had a great time. Total humiliation on a grand scale. It only worked because everyone took part – so a big thank you to all the participants!

Watch this video for some of the moments from the evening – see if you can spot Jonathan’s T-shirt lighting up in time to speech/music! Very “in character!”

Click on the picture to see the photos and see the characters. See if you can guess who was which character and who won which award – let me know by using the comments sections

I will hopefully be uploading all our holiday photos as we go along in Canada and USA so visit here every few days to see the latest – Note added afterwards, it worked! Look at the link below to see our Holiday diary and photos

What can I say, such a proud family! This was the most fantastic day and I even baked a cake to celebrate! Take a look at the photos and you might see somewhere that I just couldn’t keep out of the piccies!